TAIPEI - The maiden flight of China's new stealth jet fighter humbled those officials and observers who initially dismissed the possibility that the country could come up with such a sophisticated weapon any time soon.[…][…]

"Obviously, the development of J-20 is far faster than our intelligence anticipated," acknowledges Li Da-jung, a professor at Taipei's Tamkang University and an expert on Asia-Pacific security[…][…]

[…] according to Wang Jhy-perng, a research fellow at the Association for Managing Defense and Strategies […] "Even if the US agrees to sell brand new F-16C/Ds, it would be merely of transitional use for the few years China needs to mass produce its J-20s. It's high time that it's understood that there's no catching up with the speed China develops […]."[…]

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The Chinese are not only the largest country, the most populated, their economy is growing, their production for the international market and community is the biggest, and now they come to show that their strategic military industrial complex is more capable than what was anticipated.

There are speculations on whether China can mass produce its stealth J-20s in ten years… I wouldn't be surprised if they could do it in less because i imagine they must have some of the most modern production methods in at least some of the foreign factories that have moved in from around the world. Also, little adjustments to make the production processes more efficient can be, sometimes, adopted in other production lines.

I imagine [this is all speculation] the Chinese national military industrial production have access to much of this data and have the capability to incorporate it to their benefit in their own production lines.

After all they have just produced this prototype stealth fighter. To everyone's surprise!

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...America today...

...I don't know when it started, but i think there's no doubt that George W. Bush and his administration showed the maximum expression foolishness in their trends in government to abandon all social responsibility in many areas.

I am specifically pointing out Public Education and in there, i point at the lack of promotion or even acknowledgement of Science as an instrument for the acquisition on knowledge, and eventually of new technologies.

The US is moving backwards on all stimulus to science and scientific knowledge as we know happens with Evolution, with climate change —whether induced by humans or not—, or with the pollution of the biosphere.

The principal reason that i can see for this attitude of the US Administrations seems to be none other than accommodating to the convenience of private interests groups and multinational companies that have their imperial plans and don't want some types of scientific knowledge interfering with their bottom line or with "their" natural resources or their "production" methods.

This type of panorama of the abandonment of science (specially in a country that has been a Superpower) is foolishness and in part explains it's present down slide.

Losing ground on the education front is a very real danger. Cutbacks in education and a general trend toward dumbing down the populace translates to blowback in the form of failing to raise a new generation capable of imaging new high tech, imaginative new services in burgeoning sectors, clever emerging trends in communications and business strategies. It means that, in a generation's time, you begin the long slide downward. The further you slide, the harder it is to scrape yourself back up that steep grade to the top. Nimbler, more ambitious types will overtake you.

Anything can happen yet, but there are certainly some grim trends of late.

Either scientific research or as others speculate - espionage. Why spend lots of money inventing new technologies, when you can steal it and train your folks in the right way. Heck you don't need bleeding edge scientific minds if all you're doing is copying someone else.

_________________________I used to think it was terrible that life was unfair. Then I thought what if life were fair and all of the terrible things that happen came because we really deserved them? Now I take comfort in the general unfairness and hostility of the universe.

Don't know if the Chinese are into this but a common enough development is you take what some other country made and you improve on it substantially... then you sell it back to the original countries whose designs you copied. Arguably this is what the Japanese did with cars in the last thirty years.

But there in lies the rub. Any industrialized nation can build a plane, and make it look "stealth". But if it can't be controlled and coordinate with planes thousands of miles away and on the other side of the globe, then there's no advancement.

Never mind... they're getting better all the time and they're already giving the nations in their own backyard some serious competition. Your intelligence guys are watching these developments like hawks because they know it spells a power shift with global repercussions. They are building some serious blue water capability as well. They're basically breaking out of the box.

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Carp, I have to disagree with you. America is excellent at keeping certain things secret - the size and nature of the Pentagon's black budget comes to mind. It's all about context and which individuals and organizations harbour which secrets.

As far as property rights go, the guy with the biggest stick (or barring that, the biggest balls) gets to decide whether to honour the other guy's intellectual property rights or simply ignore them. It's not as if China is the first offender; that too is an old story.

Sarge: you don't think the Chinese know they have to modernize a whole slate of things? You don't think they very much want to project and coordinate their military resources from thousands of miles away? I think they do and I expect they're working feverishly on it. The Chinese leadership wants this stuff badly and if their economic and industrial might continues to permit favourable conditions, you can expect it to happen.

America is excellent in educating foreign exchange students to the point where even Iran has a nuc program.

All ya gotta do is apply to any Ivory Leagued College - Get a student VISA and we will educate any Russian, Chinese, Iranian, Pakistani, Israeli, Indian <-- hey anyone for that matter . In any weapons technology thats is available.

The US is the best to train anyone - and the Liberals don't care what country they come from or even what their intentions are

As far as property rights go, the guy with the biggest stick (or barring that, the biggest balls) gets to decide whether to honour the other guy's intellectual property rights or simply ignore them. It's not as if China is the first offender; that too is an old story.

Right it is an old story , which the US has never learned from the first one.

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